Chicago White Sox fans tried to come up with lots of excuses that would help to explain why they had a drought in winning the World Series for over 90 yrs during 1919 through 2005. They could call it plain poor luck, or bad management or a host of many other possible reasons. But superstition among baseball fans and players alike had always played a huge role, so they debated the possibility of the drought during those years being caused by a curse they called the Black Sox.

Scapegoats and superstitions and curses are all common to baseball lore. There was a curse of Bambino which was when the Red Sox released Bab Ruth to the disliked NY Yankees and the drought which coincided with that, hence the Bambino Curse. Then there was the Billy Goat Curse due to the Cubs misfortunes. These legends, which are based simply on superstition tend to play a role in the fans team run of bad luck. It gives them something to blame the losing or bad luck on. They truly believe their team could contend if not for intervention of such curses or bad luck that was beyond their control.

Origins of the Curse

The Black Sox Curse stems around the scandal which caught attention of our nation due to the Chicago White’s 1919 World Series scandal. Where eight team players got caught conspiring and resulted in the White Sox losing to the opponents, the Cincinnati Reds, purposely.

The entire scheme also included organized crime members, some bookies, a few professional gamblers, along with eight (8) White Sox players who were feeling a bit disenfranchises from their team before this plan was even launched. During this time the White Sox had two groups of team members, the eight (8) who felt they were being left out of it and then there were the wholesome graduates from college as well.

The Fix

Though many rumors ran about the gambling circle they never seemed to get into societies mainstream before the start of the Series anyway. Some reporters did hear something was about to happen, something was in the wrong which kept them abreast and detailing every play that happened during the game, anything that could tell them that there indeed was a conspiracy on the line to make the Sox lose. The White Sox let out too many of these mishap plays. The players were even going to win the 7th game in the series to force continuation, then the players faced the realization that the underworld figures and gamblers weren’t so likely to keep honor to the agreement and didn’t give the series anything of a semblance of legitimacy.

They are Discovered!

The sellout and it’s rumors in 1920 set the team in front of the grand jury in September. Even though it’s players eventually got acquitted mostly because evidence was no longer to be found in the Courthouse, but their reputation was shattered. Most like worse of all, they got banned from the game of baseball for life. This also made the Federal Government appoint a Commissions to the game of Baseball, and still exists today. Now the Sox have not won a World Champ Series until 2005, finally ending the Black Sox Curse.

Author Bio: Ivan Jamison is a big sports fan. You can check out his New York Yankees Watch or his Chicago Cubs Watch or his Detroit Tigers Watch

Category: Sports
Keywords: Chicago White Sox